Said Amir Arjomand 
Messianism and Sociopolitical Revolution in Medieval Islam [EPUB ebook] 

This study of messianism and revolution examines an extremely rich though unexplored historical record on the rise of Islam and its sociopolitical revolutions from Muhammad’s constitutive revolution in Arabia to the Abbasid revolution in the East and the Fatimid and Almohad revolutions in North Africa and the Maghreb. Bringing the revolutions together in a comprehensive framework, Saïd Amir Arjomand uses sociological theory as well as the critical tools of modern historiography to argue that a volatile but recurring combination of apocalyptic motivation and revolutionary action was a driving force of historical change time and again. In addition to tracing these threads throughout 500 years of history, Arjomand also establishes how messianic beliefs were rooted in the earlier Judaic and Manichaean notions of apocalyptic transformation of the world. By bringing to light these linkages and factors not found in the dominant sources, this text offers a sweeping account of the long arc of Islamic history.

Innehållsförteckning

Contents


Acknowledgments


Introduction


1. The Emergence of Apocalyptic Messianism from the Maccabean Nativist Revolution

2. Muhammad’s Constitutive Revolution and Its Apocalyptic Roots

3. Civil Wars and the Emergence of Apocalyptic Mahdism

4. The Self-Destruction of the Umayyad Empire

5. The Process of the Hashemite Revolution

6. The Integrative and Centralizing Consequences of the Abbasid Realized Mahdism

7. Apocalyptic Messianism in the Fatimid Revolution

8. The Almohad Revolution of Mahdi Ibn Tumart and the Berbers

9. The Islamicate Conceptions of Revolution

Concluding Remarks


Abbreviations

References

Index

Om författaren

Saïd Amir Arjomand is Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at Stony Brook University, founder of the Association for the Study of Persianate Society, editor of the Journal of Persianate Studies, and author of Revolution: Structure and Meaning in World History.